This Week's Must Reads - 26 February - 3 March 2024

A summary of this week's most interesting news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering new information and interesting articles. I then pick the most fascinating topic and write about it but that leaves a lot of information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the best articles and information from this week. This weekly summary is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but more comprehensive daily summaries will be for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• Net Zero is a war on the working class. It’s official. Net Zero will make us poorer. A new report finds that the British government’s climate-change policies are likely to ‘make the poor poorer, and push struggling communities further into deprivation and exclusion’. Our Journey to Net Zero, by the Institute for Community Studies (ICS), shows that the transition to Net Zero will cause a rise in unemployment, as carbon-intensive industries are forcibly restructured. Food will become more expensive.

• The Hockey Stick Trial: Science Dies in a DC Courtroom. “Science,” wrote the philosopher Karl Popper, “is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticised and fairly often, in time, corrected.” Now, a six-person jury in Washington, DC has refuted Popper’s formulation of the uniqueness of science, finding in favor of climate scientist Michael Mann in the defamation suit he brought against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn dating back to 2012.

• Let Them Eat Carbon. All over Europe, farmers, especially smallholders, are revolting against the growing economic and bureaucratic burdens associated with the European Union’s climate agenda. The problem is that, with current technologies, one can only go so far in slashing emissions in the agricultural sector. So it’s hardly surprising that policymakers, in their drive toward carbon neutrality, have turned to a drastic alternative: reducing agricultural (particularly livestock) production altogether and transforming ever-growing swaths of farmland into so-called carbon sinks.

Covid

• Where Did Covid Come From? New documents bolster the theory that it not only escaped from a laboratory but was developed in one. The new documents, which are background planning papers and drafts for the DEFUSE proposal, call for assembling SARS-like viruses from six sections of DNA, and include a cost estimate for purchase of the BsmBI restriction enzyme—exactly as the three authors had inferred. This clearly strengthens, perhaps conclusively, their contention that the virus is synthetic.

• Covid pandemic may have been started by scientists, says UN professor. Dr Filippa Lentzos, an associate professor of science and international security at King’s College London, said it was important to acknowledge the pandemic may have been started by scientists. The comments were made at the launch of a report by the Independent Task Force on Research with Pandemic Risks, which is calling for better regulations on science that puts large numbers of people in danger.

• [Four years too late!] It’s Official: We Can Pretty Much Treat Covid Like the Flu Now. New guidelines from the CDC Friday bring Covid precautions in line with those of other respiratory viruses. A case of Covid no longer means isolating for five days, according to the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. “Covid-19 is still an important public health threat, but it is not the emergency that it once was,” said Dr. Brendan Jackson.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Supreme Court bombshell: Qld’s mandatory Covid vaccine orders ‘unlawful’. In a 115-page decision handed down by Justice Glenn Martin on Tuesday morning police commissioner Katarina Carroll’s direction for mandatory Covid-19 vaccination issued in December 2021 was declared unlawful under the Human Rights Act and she was banned from taking any steps to enforce the direction.

• Sir Patrick Vallance joins Tony Blair Institute. Former Government chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has joined the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the ex-prime minister’s organisation has announced. Vallance has been appointed to the TBI’s “team of expert Strategic Counsellors”, alongside former chief of the defence staff General Sir Nick Carter. The Institute’s statement claims that Vallance “brings significant expertise to TBI’s work on the transformative role science and technology can play for governments and societies around the world”.

• How Sweden proved the world wrong about lockdown. The evidence is clear: authoritarian restrictions did not save more lives. Countries that imposed more lockdown measures did not experience lower excess death rates. In fact, Sweden had one of the lowest excess death rates towards the end of the pandemic, with fewer people dying compared with a normal pre-pandemic year. The impact of lockdowns on mortality rates may have been inconsequential, but the economic effects were overwhelmingly negative.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Shortage of Oil Tankers at Hand as Red Sea Attacks Divert Trade. Longstanding warnings from the oil tanker industry that too few of the ships are being built are coming back to haunt the market after Houthi attacks on commercial shipping caused widespread diversions in global petroleum trades. Just two new supertankers are due to join the fleet in 2024 — the fewest additions in almost four decades and about 90% below the yearly average this millennium.

• Google’s Gemini Headaches Spur $90 Billion Selloff. Shares of Alphabet fell 4.5% to $138.75 Monday, closing at its lowest price since Jan. 5 and registering its second-steepest daily loss of the last year. The selloff followed a spate of controversy surrounding Google’s Gemini AI service, with issues including Gemini’s image-generating service producing racially inaccurate depictions of historical figures.

• Maersk warns Red Sea disruptions could last into second half of year. Major container shipping companies have switched away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the longer route around Africa's Cape of Good Hope following attacks on shipping by Houthi militants. "Be prepared for the Red Sea situation to last into the second half of the year and build longer transit times into your supply chain planning," Maersk's head of North America, Charles van der Steene, said in a statement on Tuesday.

• The Suez Canal has seen a 50% drop in traffic since tensions in the Middle East ramped up.

  

• A Slow-Motion Property Crash in Germany Is a Bigger Threat to Banks Than US CRE. As fears about US commercial real estate roiled German banks this month, their message was clear: don’t worry, the vast majority of our property exposure is domestic. That may not prove the comfort it seems. While the country has so far avoided the rapid market corrections that rattled the US, experts argue that reflects arcane accounting practices shielding its lenders and investors from taking immediate hits.

• U.S. Transfers $1B Seized Bitcoin From BitFinex Hack to Unknown Addresses. Nearly $1 billion in Bitcoin, previously confiscated by the U.S. government from the Bitfinex hack case, has been moved to unknown addresses in a swift series of transactions. This involves two wallets specifically identified as containing funds from the Bitfinex heist. The transactions unfolded in four separate moves over less than two hours. Currently, another wallet associated with the U.S. government’s seizure from the Bitfinex hack still holds approximately 94,600 BTC, estimated to be worth around $5.79 billion at current prices.

• Britain is doomed to forever be America’s sick relation. Many commentators argue that the UK is condemned to continuing economic decline. As things stand, they are right: if we carry on with the same policies, such a fate will be baked in. Worse, a subsequent debt crash could even turn slow decline into precipitous collapse. Last year, GDP per capita for the average Briton was £39,400; for the average American it was £64,700 – a gap of £25,300.

• The current AI bubble is bigger than the ‘90s tech bubble.

  

• Lack of EU interest in finding Nord Stream saboteur raises serious questions. The explosions in September 2022 that crippled the Nord Stream pipelines, which used to supply natural gas to Germany and some other European countries through the Baltic Sea, were a deliberate attack on Germany's and the European Union's critical infrastructure. Many regard it as an act of war. But the EU's lack of courage to identify the culprit, despite Sweden, Denmark and Germany conducting separate probes, is not only shocking, it has also fueled wild speculation that a country deemed friendly to Germany was involved in the sabotage.

• The U.S. national debt is rising by $1 trillion about every 100 days. The nation’s debt permanently crossed over to $34 trillion on Jan. 4, after briefly crossing the mark on Dec. 29, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It reached $33 trillion on Sept. 15, 2023, and $32 trillion on June 15, 2023, hitting this accelerated pace. Before that, the $1 trillion move higher from $31 trillion took about eight months. Bank of America investment strategist Michael Hartnett believes the 100-day pattern will remain intact with the move from $34 trillion to $35 trillion.

Health

• A Spike in Heart Disease Deaths Since Covid Is Puzzling Scientists. Mortality data of the past four years show a wave of deadly cardiovascular and metabolic illness. From 2020 to 2022, a quarter of a million more Americans over 35 years old succumbed to cardiovascular disease than predicted based on historical trends, according to Bloomberg analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, age-adjusted stroke mortality was almost 5% above pre-pandemic levels, according to preliminary data, while rates from deaths related to hypertensive heart disease, rhythm abnormalities, blood clots, diabetes and kidney failure were 15-28% higher.

• Bacteria in your gut can improve your mood − new research in mice tries to zero in on the crucial strains. Probiotics have been getting a lot of attention recently. These bacteria, which you can consume from fermented foods, yogurt or even pills, are linked to a number of health and wellness benefits, including reducing gastrointestinal distress, urinary tract infections and eczema. But can they improve your mood, too?

• “Shocking” Findings – Scientists Discover How Stress Triggers Cancer’s Spread. Stress is an unavoidable aspect of life. However, excessive stress can have detrimental effects on our health. Prolonged stress elevates the risk of developing heart disease and experiencing strokes. It may also help cancer spread. How this works has remained a mystery—a challenge for cancer care. Scientists discovered that stress causes certain white blood cells called neutrophils to form sticky web-like structures that make body tissues more susceptible to metastasis.

• Fasting-mimicking diet causes hepatic and blood markers changes indicating reduced biological age and disease risk. In mice, periodic cycles of a fasting mimicking diet (FMD) protect normal cells while killing damaged cells including cancer and autoimmune cells, reduce inflammation, promote multi-system regeneration, and extend longevity. Nearly identical findings resulted from a second clinical study. Together these results provide initial support for beneficial effects of the FMD on multiple cardiometabolic risk factors and biomarkers of biological age.

Middle East

• US intelligence casts doubt on Israeli claims of UNRWA-Hamas links, report says. A US intelligence assessment of Israel’s claims that UN aid agency staff members participated in the Hamas attack on 7 October said some of the accusations were credible, though could not be independently verified, while also casting doubt on claims of wider links to militant groups. In addition, the report notes Israel’s dislike towards the UNRWA, two sources familiar with it told the Journal.

• Houthis Say No End to Red Sea Attacks Until Israeli ‘Aggression’ Stops. Yemen’s Houthis said on Tuesday they could only reconsider their missile and drone attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea once Israel ends its “aggression” in the Gaza Strip. Asked if they would halt the attacks if a ceasefire deal is reached, Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told Reuters the situation would be reassessed if the siege of Gaza ended and humanitarian aid was free to enter.

Politics

• The Machiavelli of Meta - Inside Nick Clegg's lobbying operation. In six years, Nick Clegg has gone from political has-been to one of the most powerful executives at one of the world’s biggest tech firms: President of Global Affairs at Meta. As one of Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted consiglieri, Clegg reportedly earns over $15 million a year and is tasked with dealing with the politics of its extraordinary global power and wealth. But is “the Foreign Secretary of Facebook” a constraining force on the media behemoth, or an enabling one?

• After this week’s Julian Assange court hearing, this is clear: extradition would amount to a death sentence. Politicians in the UK often express their horror at “cancel culture”, but few have so far managed to denounce the US’s attempts to cancel a journalist for the offence of causing shame and embarrassment. So, after this week, the next question is this: does our judiciary and our government have the steel to fight this extradition? Everyone who values the right to free speech undoubtedly should.

• Manufacturing Consent: The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall”. The political response to the crisis at the southern border continues to advance the bipartisan “smart wall,” having been backed by Trump and Biden alike. This bipartisan consensus reaches far beyond the US, as much of the world is similarly speeding along in implementing “digital borders.” Often, these technologies are tested and used abroad first before they are deployed at home, something that even mainstream media has acknowledged that Palantir has been doing for years.

• The enduring ghastliness of Alastair Campbell. Observing the career trajectory of Campbell, from pornographer to podcaster, it’s hard to believe that showbiz success rather than public service wasn’t what he craved all along – even if seeing him gauntly entreating us to let him entertain us is like seeing Beria attempting to join The Great British Bake-Off. He is everywhere and has been ever since he hung up his wet wipes after his stint as Tony Blair’s Groom of the Stool.

• Germany latest country to float chilling plans to freeze dissenting citizens’ bank accounts. In further evidence that the traditional financial system is gradually being weaponised to punish those who express dissenting but hitherto perfectly lawful views, the German government has announced a plan to target the bank accounts of people who donate money to groups and causes deemed by the state and its functionaries to constitute “right wing extremists”.

• Japan births hit record low and population down by largest margin in 2023. The number of babies born in Japan totaled 758,631 in 2023, hitting a record low for the eighth straight year and representing half the figure of some 1.5 million logged in 1983, a preliminary health ministry report showed Tuesday. The 2023 figure declined by 5.1% from the previous year's preliminary total of 799,728, the largest ever margin of decline. The figure fell below the 800,000 mark for the first time in 2022. The number of deaths came to a record 1,590,503, up for the third straight year.

• Belarusian exiles plot coup against Lukashenko. The group’s leader said defeating Russia in Ukraine is essential to weaken Minsk’s regime. The partisan resistance group BYPOL — which operates from Poland — has been training officers and actively sabotaging the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine, all in preparation of a coup d’état against Minsk’s regime, one senior figure said publicly. “We have worked out a plan and will put it into effect at the right time,” former Belarusian officer Aliaksandr Azarau told Belgian media outlet VRT.

• Transnistria begs Putin to ‘protect’ it against Moldova. Kremlin-allied breakaway region claimed that Chișinău is ramping up “pressure” — and now it needs Moscow’s help. “[We resolved to] appeal to the Federation Council and the State Duma of the Russian Federation, requesting measures to protect Transnistria amidst increased pressure from Moldova,” read a resolution adopted by hundreds of Transnistrian politicians in Tiraspol, the region’s capital and largest city.

• Shamima Begum shouldn’t have lost her British citizenship. Parliamentary sovereignty is the bedrock of the constitution, and the courts ought to accept it, even when bad laws are passed. It is not the job of the courts to make the law, but to adjudicate on it. Thus the Appeal Court ruling against Shamima Begum is right, even if the decision of Sajid Javid, as Home Secretary, to strip Begum of her citizenship is wrong and ought never to have been made. The decision to deprive Begum of her citizenship is wrong because it attacks two linchpins of the constitution that safeguard us all.

• After years of denials, Hunter Biden FINALLY acknowledged Joe was ‘the big guy’ in $5M China deal. At long last, first son Hunter Biden affirmed during his Wednesday impeachment inquiry deposition that his father, Joe, was “the big guy” referenced in an email about a business deal with a Chinese state-linked energy firm that yielded millions for Biden family members and other associates, more than three years after The Post broke the story.

• Secret cable: CIA orchestrated Haiti’s 2004 coup. A spectacular jailbreak in Gonaïves, Haiti in August 2002 saw a bulldozer smash through the local prison walls, allowing armed supporters of Amiot “Cubain” Métayer, a gang leader jailed weeks earlier for harassing Haitian political figures, to overrun the facility. Métayer escaped, as did 158 other prisoners. Among them were perpetrators of the April 1994 Raboteau massacre, which left dozens of Haitians dead and displaced. The victims were supporters of popular anti-imperial President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

• Ex-UK Army Chief Nick Carter, Once In Charge of “Misinformation” Surveillance Army Unit, Joins Tony Blair Institute. A new noteworthy instance of what can be described as the UK-style revolving door policy, where those working for the government and private entities switch employers in both directions, has happened in that country. A former chief of the British Army, under whose watch the 77th Brigade was spying on citizens during the pandemic, has now joined Tony Blair’s organization.

Science

• Our solar system map may need an update — the Kuiper belt could be way bigger. NASA's New Horizons mission, which encountered Pluto in 2015 is now riding through the deepest depths of the Kuiper Belt, is encountering a cosmic dust storm that hints there may be more going on in the outermost reaches of the solar system than we imagine. The continued presence of dust implies New Horizons is still within the Kuiper Belt, and that the Kuiper Belt is far more extensive than anyone knew, stretching across billions of miles farther from the sun than our maps presently estimate.

• The surprising origins of wave-particle duality. Take any quantum you like, from photons to electrons to composite particles, and it will behave as both a wave and a particle under the right circumstances. When quanta propagate through free space, they all exhibit wave-like behavior, but when they interact with another quantum, they behave like particles. Made famous by physicists in the early 20th century, the origins of wave-particle duality go back hundreds of years farther. Here's the surprising origin of wave-particle duality.

• Archaeologists Discover Mysterious Stone Circle Built Before Great Pyramids. The circular stone plaza, which measures around 60 feet in diameter, consists of two concentric walls made from unshaped stones set vertically in the ground. The monument is at the Callacpuma archaeological site in northern Peru's Cajamarca Basin, which lies around 10,000 feet above sea level near the summit of a peak in the Andes.

Technology

• OpenAI says New York Times 'hacked' ChatGPT to build copyright lawsuit. OpenAI said in a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that the Times caused the technology to reproduce its material through "deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI's terms of use." "The allegations in the Times's complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards," OpenAI said. "The truth, which will come out in the course of this case, is that the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI's products."

• Apple unplugs self-driving electric car project, reports say. Apple has reportedly cancelled its plans to build electric vehicles (EV) a decade after the iPhone maker was rumoured to be working on the project. The firm has never publicly acknowledged the project, which involves around two thousand people. Many employees from the project will be moved to the iPhone maker's artificial intelligence (AI) division, according to Bloomberg News.

• AI solves nuclear fusion puzzle for near-limitless clean energy. Scientists have used artificial intelligence to overcome a huge challenge for producing near-limitless clean energy with nuclear fusion. A team from Princeton University in the US figured out a way to use an AI model to predict and prevent instabilities with plasma during fusion reactions.

Ukraine

• British soldiers helping fire Ukrainian missiles, Olaf Scholz reveals. Germany was accused of a “flagrant abuse of intelligence” after revealing that British soldiers are supporting Ukrainian forces launching long-range Storm Shadow missiles.

• Finnish Defense Minister: Ukraine can use Finnish-provided weapons to strike Russia. Finland approved its 22nd defense aid package to Ukraine worth around 190 million euros ($205 million) in February. As with its previous aid packages, Helsinki did not disclose what it had included in the packages or when it was delivered due to security reasons.

• Is Nato heading for nuclear war? Both Russia and the West could spark an escalation. On Monday, Europe crossed yet another red line in its ever-escalating, no-longer-so-proxy war against Russia. In a hastily arranged meeting of European leaders in Paris — a response to significant Russian breakthroughs on the Ukrainian frontline over the past few weeks — Emmanuel Macron shattered one of the few taboos left in Western circles by saying that sending Nato troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out.

Vaccines

• Is the 100-year old TB vaccine a new weapon against Alzheimer’s? The idea may sound far-fetched, but decades of research show that BCG can have surprising and wide-ranging benefits that go way beyond its original purpose. Besides protecting people from TB, it seems to reduce the risk of many other infections, for instance. In a recent clinical trial, BCG halved the odds of developing a respiratory infection over the following 12 months, compared with the people receiving a placebo. BCG is also used as a standard treatment for forms of bladder cancer.

• New autopsy evidence from Japan: myocarditis – however mild – can result in fatal arrhythmias. Vaccine damage to heart’s electrical system undetectable with standard autopsy. It is perfectly possible that inflammation has been missed in the post-mortems carried out on many people dying suddenly. Moreover, according to Hart’s co-chair, pathologist, Dr Clare Craig, cardiac dissection to the level of detail required in order to ascertain how near these small areas of inflammation might be to the conductive system is a skill all pathologists are trained in but one that most “jobbing” pathologists rarely practise.

• Medicines regulator failed to flag Covid vaccine side effects and must be investigated, say MPs. All-party group believe MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues in February 2021 but did not highlight the problems for several months. It has claimed that “far from protecting patients” the regulator operates in a way that “puts them at serious risk”. The APPG said it was also concerned that MHRA regulation of medicine was funded by the pharmaceutical industry and said the body had shifted from focusing on scrutiny to trying to help drugs get approved.